feeling, when brother or father steps in to help hang the hogs, or a
sister to assist in rendering lard, or in preparing a plentiful meal. An
active farmer will have two or three porkers killed, scalded, and hung
up by sunrise, and by night the whole operation of sausage and “pudding”
making, and lard rendering, will be finished, and the house set in order.
The friends who have assisted receive a portion of the sausage, etc.,
which portion is called the “metzel-sup” (or soop). The metzel-sup is
very often sent to poor widows and others.
_We_ make scrapple from the skin, a part of the livers, and heads, with
the addition of corn-meal; but, instead, our “Dutch” neighbors make
_liverwurst_ (“woorsht”), or meat pudding, omitting the meal, and this
compound, stuffed into the larger entrails, is very popular in Lancaster
market. Some make _pawn-haus_ from the liquor in which the pudding-meat
was boiled, adding thereto corn-meal. The name is properly _pann-haas_,
and signifies, perhaps, panned-rabbit. It is sometimes made of richer
material.
These three dishes, just before mentioned, are fried before eating.
I have never seen hog’s-head cheese in “Dutch” houses. If the
boiling-pieces of beef are kept over summer, they are smoked, instead of
being preserved in brine. Much smear-case (_schmier-käse_), or cottage
cheese, is eaten in these regions. Children, and some grown people too,
fancy it upon bread with molasses; which may be considered as an offset
to the Yankee pork and molasses.
In some Pennsylvania families smear-case and apple-butter are eaten to
save butter, which is a salable article. The true “Dutch” housewife’s
ambition is to supply the store-goods for the family as far as possible
from the sale of the butter and eggs.
We have also Dutch cheese, which may be made by crumbling the dry
smear-case, working in butter, salt, and chopped sage, forming it into
pats, and setting them away to ripen. The _sieger-käse_ is made from
sweet milk boiled, with sour milk added and beaten eggs, and then set to
drain off the whey. (_Ziegen-käse_ is German for goat’s milk cheese.)
“Schnits and knep” is said to be made of dried apples, fat pork, and
dough-dumplings cooked together.
“Tell them they’re good,” says one of my “Dutch” acquaintances.
Knep is from the German, _knöpfe_, buttons or knobs. In common speech the
word has fallen to nep. The “nep” are sometimes made from pie-crust, or
sometimes from a batter of eggs and milk, and may be boiled without the
meat; but one of my acquaintances says that the smoke gives a peculiar
and appetizing flavor.
Apple-dumplings in “Dutch” are _aepel-dumplins_; whence I infer that
like _pye-kroosht_ they are not of German origin.
In the fall our “Dutch” make _sauer-kraut_. I happened to visit the house
of my friend Susanna when her husband and son were going to take an
hour at noon to help her with the kraut. Two white tubs stood upon the
back porch, one with the fair round heads, and the other to receive the
cabbage when cut by a knife set in a board (a very convenient thing for
cutting kohl-slaw and cucumbers). When cut, the cabbage is packed into a
“stand” with a sauer-kraut staff, resembling the pounder with which New
Englanders beat clothes in a barrel. Salt is added during the packing.
When the cabbage ferments it becomes acid. The kraut-stand remains in the
cellar; the contents not being unpalatable when boiled with potatoes and
the chines or ribs of pork. But the smell of the boiling kraut is very
strong, and that stomach is probably strong which readily digests the
meal.
Sometimes “nep” or dumplings are boiled with the salt meat and
sour-krout. A young teacher, who was speaking of sour-krout and nep, was
asked how he spelt this word. He did not know, and said he did not care,
so he got the nep.
“As Dutch as sour-krout,” has become a familiar saying here. In Lehigh
County, if I mistake not, I heard the common dialect called “sour-krout
Dutch.”
Our “Dutch” make soup in variety, and pronounce the word short, between
_soup_ and _sup_. Thus there is Dutch soup, potato soup, etc.; scalded
milk and bread is “bread and milk soup,” bread crumbed into coffee
“coffee soup.”
Noodel soup (_nudeln_) is a treat. Noodels may be called domestic
macaroni. I have seen a dish in which bits of fried bread were laid upon
the piled-up noodels, to me unpalatable from the quantity of eggs in the
latter.
Dampf-noodles, or _gedämpfte nudeln_, are boiled, and melted butter is
poured over them.
The extremely popular cakes, twisted, sprinkled with salt, and baked
crisp and brown, called pretzels (_brezeln_), were known in Pennsylvania
long before the cry for “ein lager, zwei brezeln” (a glass of lager and
two pretzels), was heard in the land.
One of my “Dutch” neighbors, who visited Western New York, was detained
several hours at Elmira. “They hadn’t no water-crackers out there,” he
complained. “Didn’t know what you meant when you said water-crackers; and
they hain’t got pretzels. You can’t get no pretzels.”
Perhaps not at the railroad stations.
We generally find excellent home-made wheat bread in this limestone
region. We make the pot of “sots” (or rising) overnight, with boiled
mashed potatoes, scalded flour, and sometimes hops. Friday is baking-day.
The “Dutch” housewife is very fond of baking in the brick oven, but the
scarcity of wood must gradually accustom us to the great cooking-stove.
One of the heavy labors of the fall is the fruit-drying. Afterward your
hostess invites you to partake, thus: “Mary, will you have pie? This is
snits, and this is elder” (or dried apples, and dried elderberries).
Dried peaches are peach snits.
A laboring woman once, speaking to me of a neighbor, said, “She hain’t
got many dried apples. If her girl would snits in the evening, as I
did!—but she’d rather keep company and run around than to snits.”
The majority keep one fire in winter. This is in the kitchen, which with
nice housekeepers is the abode of neatness, with its rag carpet and
brightly polished stove. An adjoining room or building is the wash-house,
where butchering, soap-making, etc., are done by the help of a great
kettle hung in the fireplace, not set in brick-work.
Adjoining the kitchen, on another side, is a state apartment, also
rag-carpeted, and called “the room.” The stove-pipe from the kitchen
sometimes passes through the ceiling, and tempers the sleeping-room of
the parents. These arrangements are not very favorable to bathing in cold
weather; indeed, to wash the whole person is not very common, in summer
or in winter.
Will you go up-stairs in a neat Dutch farm-house? Here are rag carpets
again. Gay quilts are on the best beds, where green and red calico,
perhaps in the form of a basket, are displayed on a white ground; or the
beds bear brilliant coverlets of red, white, and blue, as if to “make the
rash gazer wipe his eye.” The common pillow-cases are sometimes of blue
check, or of calico. In winter, people often sleep under feather-covers,
not so heavy as a feather-bed. In the spring there is a great washing
of bedclothes, and then the blankets are washed, which during winter
supplied the place of sheets.
HOLIDAYS.
I was sitting alone, one Christmas time, when the door opened and there
entered some half-dozen youths or men, who frightened me so that I
slipped out at the door. They, being thus alone, and not intending any
harm, at once left. These, I suppose, were Christmas mummers, though I
heard them called “bell-schnickel.”
At another time, as I was sitting with my little boy, Aunt Sally came
in smiling and mysterious, and took her place by the stove. Immediately
after, there entered a man in disguise, who very much alarmed my little
Dan.
The stranger threw down nuts and cakes, and, when some one offered to
pick them up, struck at him with a rod. This was the real bell-schnickel,
personated by the farmer.
It will hardly be supposed that Bell-schnickel and Santa Claus are the
same; but the former is Peltz-nickel[5] or Nicholas dressed in fur. St.
Nicholas’ day, the 6th of December, is in Advent.
On Christmas morning the cry is, “Christmas-gift!” and not, as elsewhere,
“A merry Christmas!” Christmas is a day when people do not work, but go
to meeting, when roast turkey and mince-pie are in order, and when the
“Dutch” housewife has store of cakes on hand to give to the little folks.
We still hear of barring-out at Christmas. The pupils fasten themselves
in the school-house, and keep the teacher out to obtain presents from
him.
The first of April (which our neighbors generally call Aprile) is a great
occasion. This is the opening of the farming year. The tenant farmers
and other “renters” move to their new homes, and interest-money and
other debts are due; and so much money changes hands in Lancaster, on
the first, that pickpockets are attracted thither, and the unsuspicious
“Dutch” farmer sometimes finds himself a loser.
The movings, on or about the first, are made festive occasions;
neighbors, young and old, are gathered; some bring wagons to transport
farm utensils and furniture, others assist in driving cattle, put
furniture in its place, and set up bedsteads; while the women are ready
to help prepare the bountiful meal. At this feast I have heard a worthy
tenant farmer say, “Now help yourselves, as you did out there” (with the
goods).
Whitsuntide Monday is a great holiday with the young “Dutch” folks.
It occurs when there is a lull in farm-work, between corn-planting
and hay-making. Now the new summer bonnets are all in demand, and the
taverns are found full of youths and girls, who sometimes walk the street
hand-in-hand, eat cakes and drink beer, or visit the “flying horses.” A
number of seats are arranged around a central pole, and, a pair taking
each seat, the whole revolves by the work of a horse, and you can have a
circular ride for six cents.
On the Fourth of July we are generally at work in the harvest-field.
Several of the festivals of the church are held here as days of rest, if
not of recreation. Such are Good Friday, Ascension-day, etc. On Easter,
eggs colored and otherwise ornamented were formerly much in vogue.
Thanksgiving is beginning to be observed here, but the New Englander
would miss the family gatherings, the roast turkeys, the pumpkin-pies.
Possibly we go to church in the morning, and sit quiet for the rest
of the day; and as for pumpkin-pies, we do not greatly fancy them.
Raisin-pie, or mince-pie, we can enjoy.
The last night of October is “Hallow-eve.” I was in Lancaster one
Hallow-eve, and boys were ringing door-bells, carrying away door-steps,
throwing corn at the windows, or running off with an unguarded wagon. I
heard of one or two youngsters who had requested an afternoon holiday to
go to church, but who had spent their time in going out of town to steal
corn for this occasion. In the country, farm-gates are taken from their
hinges and removed; and it was formerly a favorite amusement to take
a wagon to pieces, and, after carrying the parts up to the barn-roof,
to put it together again, thus obliging the owner to take it apart and
bring it down. Such “tricks” as are described by Burns in the poem of
“Hallow-e’en” may be heard of occasionally, continued perhaps by the
Scotch-Irish element in our population.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Over twenty years ago I was circulating an anti-slavery petition among
women. I carried it to the house of a neighboring farmer, who was
a miller also, and well to do. His wife signed the petition (_all_
women did not in those days), but she signed it with her mark. I have
understood that it is about twenty years since the school law was
made universal here, and that our township of Upper Leacock wanted
to resist by litigation the establishment of public schools.[6] It
is the school-tax that is onerous. Within about twenty years a great
impetus has been given to education by the establishment of the county
superintendency, of normal schools, and of teachers’ institutes. I think
it is within this time, however, that the board of directors met, in an
adjoining township, and, being called upon to vote by ballot, there were
afterward found in the box several different ways of spelling the word
“no.”
At the last institute, a worthy young man at the blackboard was telling
the teachers how to make their pupils pronounce the word “did,” which
they inclined to call _dit_; and a young woman told me that she found it
necessary, when teaching in Berks County, to practise speaking “Dutch,”
in order to make the pupils understand their lessons. It must be rather
hard to hear and talk “Dutch” almost constantly, and then to go to a
school where the text-books are English.
There is still an effort made to have German taught in our public
schools. The reading of German is considered a great accomplishment,
and is one required for a candidate for the ministry among some of our
plainer sects. But the teacher is generally overburdened in the winter
with the necessary branches in a crowded, ungraded school. Our township
generally has school for seven months in the year; some townships have
only five; and in Berks County I have heard of one having only four
months. About thirty-five dollars a month is paid to teachers, male and
female.
My little boy of seven began to go to public school this fall. For a
while I could hear him repeating such expressions as, “Che, double o, t,
coot” (meaning good). “P-i-g, pick.” “Kreat A, little A, pouncing P.” “I
don’t like chincherpread.” Even among our “Dutch” people of more culture,
_etch_ is heard for _aitch_ (h), and _chay_ for jay (j), and these are
relics of early training.
The standard of our county superintendent is high (1868), and his
examinations are severe. His salary is about seventeen hundred dollars.
Where there is so much wealth as here, it seems almost impossible that
learning should not follow, as soon as the minds of the people are turned
toward it; but the great fear of making their children “lazy” operates
against sending them to school. Industrious habits will certainly tend
more to the pecuniary success of a farmer than the “art of writing and
speaking the English language _correctly_.”
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
My dear old “English” friend, Samuel G., had often been asked to stay
and eat with David B., and on one occasion he concluded to accept the
invitation. They went to the table, and had a silent pause; then David
cut up the meat, and each workman or member of the family put in a fork
and helped himself. The guest was discomfited, and, finding that he was
likely to lose his dinner otherwise, he followed their example. The
invitation to eat had covered the whole. When guests are present, many
say, “Now help yourselves;” but they do not use vain repetitions, as the
city people do.
Coffee is still drunk three times a day in some families, but frequently
without sugar. The sugar-bowl stands on the table, with spoons therein
for those who want sugar; but at a late “home-coming” party I believe
that I was the only one at the table who took sugar. The dishes of
smear-case, molasses, apple-butter, etc., are not always supplied with
spoons. _We_ dip in our knives, and with the same useful implements
convey the food to our mouths. Does the opposite extreme prevail among
the farmers of Massachusetts? Do they always eat with their forks, and
use napkins?
On many busy farm-occasions, the woman of the house will find it
more convenient to let the men eat first,—to get the burden of the
harvest-dinner off her mind and her hands, and then sit down with her
daughters, her “maid” and little children, to their own repast. But the
allowing to the men the constant privilege of eating first has passed
away, if indeed it ever prevailed. At funeral feasts the old men and
women sit down first, with the mourning family. Then succeed the second,
third, and fourth tables.
Among the children of well-to-do parents, the unmarried daughter will
sometimes go into the service of the married one, receiving wages
regularly, or allowing them to accumulate. An acquaintance of mine in
Lancaster had a hired girl living in his family who was worth twelve
thousand dollars in cash means, her father having been a rich farmer.
Among our plain farmers, such persons are considered more praiseworthy
than the reverse.
I lately asked a lawyer in Northampton County why certain persons had
allowed the Lutheran and Reformed farmers, men of very little school
learning, to outstrip them in the pursuit of wealth. He answered that
all the tendency of the education of these last was saving. “In old
times,” he continued, “when we had no ranges nor cooking-stoves, but a
fire on the hearth, I used to hear my mother say to her daughters that
they must not let the dish-water boil, or they would not be married for
seven years.” On the same principle, when a young “English” girl whom I
knew told a young “Dutchman” that she was going to make bread, he said,
“I’m coming for a handful of your dough-trough scrapings;” the idea being
that there should be no scrapings left.
Mr. S., of Lehigh County, says, “We make money in Pennsylvania by saving;
in New York, they make money by paying out.”
Mrs. E., of the same county, says, “We Pennsylvanians are brought up
to work in the house and to family affairs, but the Eastern girls
are brought up more in the factories, and they don’t know anything
about housework. Many have been married, and lived here in this town
(Allentown), of whom I have heard speak, who have not lived happily,
because they were not used to keep house in the way that their husbands
had been accustomed to. They were very intelligent, but not accustomed
to work, and their families would get poor, and stay poor.” Mrs. R.’s
daughter added, that “the New England men, the Eastern men, milk and do
all the outside work.”
The writer thinks, nevertheless, that New England women will not be
willing to admit that they do not understand housework, and are not
eminently “faculized.”
We Lancaster “Dutch” are always striving to seize Time’s forelock. We
rise, even in the winter, about four, feed the stock while the women
get breakfast, eat breakfast in the short days by coal-oil lamps, and
by daylight are ready for the operations of the day. The English folks
and the backsliding “Dutch” are sometimes startled when they hear their
neighbors blow the horn or ring the bell for dinner. On a recent pleasant
October day the farmer’s wife was churning out-of-doors, and cried, “Why,
there’s the dinner-bells a’ready. Mercy days!” I went in to the clock,
and found it at twenty minutes of eleven. The “Dutch” farmers almost
invariably keep their time half an hour or more ahead, like that village
in Cornwall where it was twelve o’clock when it was but half-past eleven
to the rest of the world. Our “Dutch” are never seen running to catch a
railroad train.
We are not a total-abstinence people. Before these times of high prices,
liquor was often furnished to hands in the harvest-field.
A few years ago a meeting was held in a neighboring school-house to
discuss a prohibitory liquor law. After various speeches the question
was put to the vote, thus: “All those who want leave to drink whiskey
will please to rise.” “Now all those who don’t want to drink whiskey will
rise.” The affirmative had a decided majority.
Work is a cardinal virtue with the “Dutchman.” “He is lazy,” is a very
opprobrious remark. At the quilting, when I was trying to take out one of
the screws, Katy Groff, who is sixty-five, exclaimed, “How lazy I am, not
to be helping you!” (“_Wie ich bin faul._”)
Marriages sometimes take place between the two nationalities; but I do
not think the “Dutch” farmers desire English wives for their sons, unless
the wives are decidedly rich. On the other hand, I heard of an English
farmer’s counselling his son to seek a “Dutch” wife. When the son had
wooed and won his substantial bride, “Now he will see what good cooking
is,” said a “Dutch” girl to me. I was surprised at the remark, for his
mother was an excellent housekeeper.
The circus is the favorite amusement of our people. Lancaster papers
have often complained of the slender attendance which is bestowed upon
lectures and the like; even theatrical performances are found “slow,”
compared with the feats of the ring.
Our “Dutch” use a freedom of language that is not known to the English,
and which to them savors of coarseness. “But they mean no harm by it,”
says one of my English friends. It is difficult to practise reserve where
the whole family sit in one heated room. This rich limestone land in
which the “Dutch” delight is nearly level to an eye trained among the
hills. Do hills make a people more poetical or imaginative?
Perhaps so; but there is vulgarity too among the hills.
* * * * *
The foregoing article was written about fourteen years ago, and appeared
(with perhaps some small changes) in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for October,
1869. It was published in the first edition of this work in 1872, and in
the second edition in 1874. Many of the alterations which were made in
one or both of these editions are now removed to the Appendix, where will
also be found additional matter on similar subjects.
The passage of over twelve years has considerably changed the
neighborhood in which I live. The greatest differences are the rise
in the value of land; the division into smaller farms; the general
introduction of the culture of tobacco; and the change in the population
by the coming in of a larger number of that plainest sect of Mennonites,
called Amish.
As regards the rise in the value of land, it is doubtless in part
apparent only, from the greater amount of money at this time. I have
spoken of one who said, “Well, Seth, it seems as if you Dutch folks had
determined to root us English out; but thee had to pay pretty dear for
thy root this time.” The farm alluded to was sold about 1855, and brought
less than one hundred and sixty-three dollars per acre,—there being one
hundred and ten acres. It has since been divided, and eighty acres, now a
very large farm here, with the newer farm buildings, it is supposed would
now bring over two hundred and fifty dollars. Small properties sell much
higher in proportion. I hear of twenty acres, with fair farm buildings,
having sold last fall for nine thousand dollars.
The division into smaller farms is caused in a great measure by the Amish
increasing and dividing properties among their children, so that farms
are running as low, in many cases, as from twenty-five down to ten acres.
It is rare for the Amish to remain unmarried. The owners of such small
properties cannot afford to hire help; the Amish help one another, and
are willing to help others also. Many acts of neighborly kindness are
exchanged here, even to giving a sick neighbor several days’ work in the
harvest-field.
Tobacco was cultivated to profit long ago on farms and islands lying on
the Susquehanna; but one of the consequences of the civil war was to
make the cultivation of the weed more general here, and the immense sums
obtained for fine crops have also kept up the value of this land.
The routine of farming described in the foregoing article is now
abandoned. The following are the crops raised lately on a farm visible
from where I write,—a farm that has been for years under excellent
cultivation. It contains sixty-eight acres, of which (in round numbers)
twenty-six are in wheat, eighteen in Indian corn, eleven in grass, six
in tobacco, three-quarters of an acre in potatoes, and the remainder
is occupied by garden, orchard, and buildings. Oats has not been grown
on this farm for six years. The ground is so rich that oats lodge or
fall, and will not mature the grain. For the last four years wheat has
averaged thirty bushels to the acre. During the same time Indian corn
has averaged about fifty-five bushels. To speak slang, it is not one of
our brag crops. One year the cut-worms took two-thirds of it on the farm
mentioned; and this had to be replanted. The greatest crop of corn of
which I hear mention on this farm was grown some years ago, and was nine
hundred bushels on ten acres.
As regards grass, the owner estimates that for the last four years they
have made on an average nearly three tons of hay to the acre; last year
they had thirty-six tons on ten acres.